There isn’t much time to think during Prototype, just some moments of respite whilst one glides or leaps between buildings, if one chooses not to just destroy everything one sees along the way.
But in those moments, you’ll think two things. “Haha, look at the crowd!” and “Why did Sega take the license for and subsequently fuck up The Incredible Hulk?”
The rest of the time, it’s “How do I get into the base easiest?” or “What’s the best power to crush this group of enemies?” Sometimes “Is that helicopter close enough to kick, or do I need to throw things at it?” Even that disappears into the zen understanding of Prototype quickly enough, though, the fluid destruction and devastation left by Alex Mercer, or the player controlling him.
Prototype is a game of two parts. Awesomely bad 90s plot presented mostly in crazy 15 second cutscene memories of people you abosrb, and nearly unstoppable movement. Constant chaos and battle on an escalating scale. By the end of the game if you’re ground level, you’re going to be in the middle of the fighting. Swarms of military and infected enemies abound even fairly early on, and it would be criminal not to mention the framerate doesn’t ever drop in the middle of this, at least on consoles (there’s still some performance issue for PC versions, excepting for very new high end systems). It has every right to, but it doesn’t.
The simplest description of Prototype is to call it parts Mercenaries, Dead Rising, and Hulk:Ultimate Destruction. It’s wanton melee murder on a massive scale (well, except when you steal a tank or helicopter, then it’s missile murder), and it’s so damn fun. There’s a great selection of offensive abilities, two very useful major defensive abilities, and since you can absorb just about anything living for health (sometimes you’ll need to beat it down a bit first, but hey, that’s okay), there’s not many times you’ll be finding yourself thinking “There’s just too many enemies!”
The game is absolute rapid dynamic destruction 95% of the time. There’s some points where players will want to use a stealth approach, and for that there’s a set of powers and abilities to let them absorb military folks stealthily and to disable the virus scanners that can find a disguised player in the open (open, that is. In a tank, APC, or helicopter? Just fine!). And to stealthily absorb enemies with knowledge you need, an ability to let you point out someone else as, well, you. “There’s the target, over there!” the player shouts, then when everyone is looking away, the player devours someone with helicopter pilot experience.
Oh, yes. While upgrades to your own unique abilities are bought with experience points, which are quickly accumulated by wanton mayhem, side missions (mostly fun, mostly), and story missions, “disguise abilities”, as they’re called, are upgraded by eating people. Find a weapons trainer, improve your machine gun skill (more damage, and more bullets). A mechanic? You’re better with APCs! Devour a commander, and you can call in more air strikes, and they have a wider range. It doesn’t entirely make sense, to be fair, that by becoming more skilled with a missile launcher I can fire three more missiles before getting a new one, unless I just really sucked at reloading. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s an effective system, and really, really amusing to eat someone and gain his power.
The story is cheesy awesome, particularly the flashbacks from absorbing “web of intrigue” targets, and so is swooping down from on high to get them. The control is SILK. While there’s a ton of things to do in any fight, and several mid-fight menus, it all works, and there’s a liberal, effective use of slow motion. When players open the powers menus, the game slows down. When they lock onto a target, a quick moment of slow motion, same as changing. It allows both a better view of the chaos, an easier time being sure you’re on the right target, and it looks so damn cool. It’s entirely possible to jump off a building and spin around firing a machine gun at ground targets in slow motion the whole way by switching targets the whole time. And damned effective too. The short bursts of slow motion really make a difference with firearms especially. Normally in a game like this that sounds pointless, and while they’re not very effective against infected, they’re deadly against humans. Military forces best beware Alex Mercer’s John Woo airspins!
On top of this, there’s the air dashes, gliding, quick turning, controlled climbing, parkour flips over vehicles, and bashing-out-of-the-way of things. It all becomes completely intuitive and precise movement is surprisingly easy, even in the air from high high up.
There are, certainly, a few downsides in the game, but they’re so damn minor, really, if you’re playing. For once, the textures can be a little meh. Buildings, enemies, etc. There’s damage skins on vehicles too, but again, not the most impressive. The city itself is a little bland, too. Not a lot of major landmarks, not a lot going on. To be fair, it’s the middle of a zombie apocolypse, and the non-infected areas are going on normally with their lives. There’s an overuse of post-processed color around infected areas too. While a hint of red in everything is fitting, toward the end of the game everything is red, and it really can grate a little. It tends to fall away in a fight, but when gliding around, it annoys.
Some of the boss fights can get repetitive, same as Hulk:Ultimate Destruction, often breaking down into hurling something large, running away, and repeating, with an occasional flying elbow drop for good measure. Repetition strikes side missions too, at least in the tank-based ones. Others are pretty fun, but the tank-based destruction missions really require a lot of luck as much as anything to get the needed points for a bronze, much less gold medal, and that’s not even considering the platinum challenges. THAT is distinctly not fun,
Hint and exploration orbs disappear far too easily, and mostly aren’t seen until you get too close, and there’s some pop-in otherwise, though it’s surprisingly little considering movement speed. And while the movement speed is great, it would be better if the game had some quick movement points like Hulk and even GTAIV had. Couldn’t Mercer, with his shapeshifting and such, quickly travel through a sewer system or even the subway? It’d be nice to just catch a train instead of having to run all the way down to to the other end of Manhattan.
To come up with all those issues took me a solid 30 minutes. Normally a game is easy to complain about, but not Prototype. Even with those issues, it’s all forgotten because it’s so damn fun. Yes it’s that undefinable unquantifiable item, and it’s totally relative, but it’s there. Everything is on the rule of awesome, and players should be laughing maniacally while playing. It’s not hard to say this is a rehash of Hulk:Ultimate Destruction at all, especially when some things are completely unchanged. Even the terms “Critical mass” and the attack “Critical pain”, though the actual attack did change, this time. Still, there’s a thunderclap, ground stomps, all the Hulk moves, but now there’s upgraded versions of everything. The critical ground smash includes spikes coming up, the critical thunderclap now has skewering tentacles. And that’s the whole game, it’s a giant upgraded Ultimate Destruction. Oh. And you unlock an armor ability that basically makes you look like Guyver. And that’s awesome.
Prototype gets 4.5 out of 5 stars. It’s fun. Tons tons tons of fun, despite a few frustrating moments and one potentially awful short mission series. And you should be too busy kicking helicopters into tanks to complain.
Stay tuned in a few days, when I review Infamous which it turns out Prototype ruined my enjoyment of!
June 29th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
And still I have yet to grab a copy. I accidentally bought Red Faction: Terrorist and Sacred 2 in the meantime. Plus the Fallout 3 DLC.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Sacred 2 is certainly passable though. And Red Faction is quite good!
Granted Fallout 3 DLC does take much of my own time since they decided now to release a fourth pack. Every time I’m thinking about starting a new fallout character, too, they add something new for my old ones!
June 30th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Sacred 2 is hot and cold for me, but maybe I’ll get into it.. I really like Red Faction, enough to go back and reinstall the originals. For the first time last night I actually took it online and I am very impressed. Fast-paced and furious with so many options for your weapon/backpack loadout. Funness.
I don’t know what I’m gonna do when my Fallout 3 char hits level 30, which will likely happen before Mothership Zeta. Point Lookout was great, though.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Got the game now, double-awesome